Actuator saturation and anti-windup compensation in event-triggered control

Event-triggered control aims at reducing the communication load over the feedback link in networked control systems by sending information only if certain event conditions, which guarantee a desired control performance, are satisfied. This article investigates the consequences of actuator saturation on the behavior of the event-triggered control loop in terms of its stability and information exchange. Stability properties are derived using linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) which show how the stability of the event-triggered control loop depends on the selection of the event threshold. Moreover, it is shown that a lower bound on the minimum inter-event time exists being likewise affected by the event threshold. As actuator saturation might severely degrade the performance of the event-triggered closed-loop system, the scheme is extended by incorporating an anti-windup mechanism in order to overcome this problem. The results are illustrated by simulations and experiments.